In the weeks that followed, Jonah began to find his place in the traveling company. Newcomers like him were on probation until everyone saw whether they stuck or not. The carnival often picked up hired help that blew away in the night like fluff on the wind when they realized transporting a traveling show was a lot of hard labor. When even Alan Henderson, who’d been part of the show for several years, could take off and leave the others scrambling to fill his tiny shoes, why would they trust a stray like Jonah to stay? The comradeship of the road was not immediately welcoming to newcomers. Comradeship of the road aside, there were cliques among these people as there’d been back in his schooldays. Jonah supposed it was the nature of man to carve out small groups within larger ones. Saul Parinksy, who everyone knew thought he could run the show better than Grimstone, was king of a court that included self-absorbed Miss Jamie acting as queen, Jack Treanor as jester, several of the acrobats, and Dimitri, that muscular moth who fluttered near Miss Jamie’s flame.
